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PHOTOS: Rhee at POLITICO Breakfast Club

Rhee quickly rose to prominence as chancellor in Washington, a position she assumed in 2007 and stepped down from in 2010, following intense criticism about her outspoken approach to reforming the city’s schools. As chancellor, she shut down schools, she fired administrators — and she wasn’t afraid to butt heads with teachers’ unions.

She returns to the spotlight this month with her book, “Radical: Fighting to Put Students First,” but with the same message: Education reform is a national test and the answers aren’t easy.

On Friday, Rhee told POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush that though she “fell short” in her delivery — she has no regrets about the actions she took.

“In retrospect, people are always saying, ‘What would you do differently?’ And I very strongly believe that what we did were the right things, they were difficult things, but they were the right things,” she said. “But now what I know is that how you do things is just as important as what you do. And we fell short on that front.”

“It’s interesting to me the fact that a lot of people are trying to choose one or two of the people who support us and cast us as a conservative, right-wing organization,” Rhee, a Democrat, said at POLITICO’s Breakfast Club in Washington.

She said that while she lists prominent Republicans such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval as supporters of her education advocacy group StudentsFirst, there are big-name Democrats who support her endeavors, too.

“Guess what, so does [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel, [Los Angeles Mayor] Antonio Villaraigosa … as well as other prominent Democrats,” she said. “This is actually the cool thing about what we’re doing — this is bipartisan.”

She said Sandoval “listens, he knows what he knows and knows what he doesn’t know.”

Rhee — who is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, another Democrat who supports her causes — called anyone looking to stick StudentsFirst with a party label “disingenuous.”

“What I think people are trying to do is pigeonhole us as an organization because they’re picking one or two of these people and it’s disingenuous.”

She said that while unions are “doing their job” in advocating for teachers, the unions are beginning to bargain with what once were untouchable subjects.